The Salt-Box

In the current issue of our campus paper (here’s a .pdf), there’s an article about a local initiative to explore shifting more classes to a twice-a-week model, as a way to improve the use of classrooms, remove or ease various bottlenecks to graduation, and so forth. The reporter does a good job laying out the basic motivation for it. At some point, though, you’ve got to get the student reaction, which I’m only quoting because I’ve heard about 15 people say this, not to pick on the individual student.

“I choose not to have [three-day ] classes. It really could be a good thing because it could give students more time to study. College is stressful for us students and we need time off.”

Let’s pass by the tension between the last two sentences (”we need to study” vs. “we need time off”). Let’s even pass by the implication that students are the only ones stressed out by the semester.

It certainly is pretty to imagine that, if more classes shift to a twice-a-week format, more students will get a twice-a-week schedule. Look: there aren’t enough rooms to have more Tues/Thurs. classes, at least not during peak times. So, if we move MWF classes to twice-a-week formats, then what you’re going to get are TR classes, MW classes, MR classes, TF classes, and so forth. But I’d be very surprised if the result is, for most students, “more time off.”

(I’m a little stressed about this, since I like the MWF schedule–actually, my schedule is MWF+R: I usually teach a 3-hr course on Thursday nights so that I’m out of the house for this show.)

New Kid has already posted about Mark Bauerlein’s latest Brainstorm post, “Stop Pushing Yourself.”  In general, if her understanding of Bauerlein’s point is correct, then I agree with her and her commenters.

But I understood the post to mean, in effect, “you may well be busy, but if you are, a certain amount of this is self-generated–and if that’s the case, why declaim so loudly about it?”  (One of New Kid’s commentator’s hits the partial reason: that it’s a defensive answer to those who say academics have it easy.) If *that’s* his point, though, then I probably agree with him.  (Especially because tenure-line faculty comments about workload tend to obscure the most important academic labor problem–the contingent faculty.)

I’ve long-since stopped tracking precisely how many hours I work.  On a typical (non-grading) week, it’s close to 45-50 hours; grading weeks or the weeks before a deadline can easily be up to 80.  Having said that, almost all of that is self-generated.

For example: This semester, I’m teaching 2 wholly new courses, plus a significantly re-designed third class. (There’s also a workshop that’s unchanged from last year, plus I’m cashing in overload from a previous semester–so, in a semester I’m supposed to be teaching 9 credit hours, I’m teaching 11, plus several independent studies. ) That third class was successful last time, and I could easily have re-run it and saved myself some aggravation.  I could also have replaced the 2 brand-new courses with 2 sections of the survey, and cut my work time considerably.  I didn’t have design all the clever new web 2.0 assignments, which take a lot of up-front time.  I’m on some committees that are time-consuming–senate, information technology (which I chair), and assessment–and I probably don’t need to be doing all 3.  I’m on the union council, for which I do less than I should. I coordinate our undergraduate research & creative achievement day, which is coming up.  I’ve arranged for a Very! Exciting! Speaker!! to come to campus at the end of the month.  Then there’s a a variety of writing projects, some of which will count a lot for promotion someday (Alton Locke, Paul Clifford, some articles & conference papers), and others that count for less (Bookslut, PopMatters, et al.).  And, as regular readers know, I spend a certain amount of time during the week at home to keep the kid out of daycare.

So, I’m pretty busy, I guess, but it really is stretching it to say that more than 40% of this is required or expected.  I’m at a 4/4 school, and I have some articles, a book, plus a book-like thing which is not a book.  I could’ve rotated 4 classes: comp, the survey, the Victorian age, and the Victorian novel, and those only.  And  I could’ve done, say, one university-service thing (plus dept. service): maybe the senate, or chaired ITC, or coordinated URCAD.  I’m pretty sure that would’ve gotten me through promotion & tenure.  (Knocking on wood, of course, because I’m still untenured–though no additional amount of accomplishment would’ve gotten me tenure last year.)

It’s also worth acknowledging that the factor that drives many tenure-track professors at 4/4 schools to overwork–”ooh, I’ll write my way out!”–doesn’t apply in my case: How would I leave a school where A. & I *both* are on tenure-line appointments?

When so much of our work is self-chosen, then, complaining about overwork is rhetorically peculiar.  It does occur to me that there’s something weirdly Puritanical about the way academics talk about being busy, as if the # of hours they work were itself a sign of virtue.

For a different take on work, compare this post at the 37signals blog, where Jason Fried talks about some of the ways his company has encouraged people to work less.  Some of them will be familiar to many academics: a shorter (or more flexible) workweek, “funding people’s passions” (what my school would call a “faculty development grant”), and a discretionary spending account for work-related materials (what my state university would probably call “theft”).

I can’t find the passage tonight but Donald Hall (the speaker mentioned above) has described how, despite his productivity–much of which while at a 4/4 school and while being chair–he still is usually able to be done at a reasonable hour.  Elsewhere, though, he writes:

These are the two extremes that continue to plague academic existence: that of Casaubonic paralysis and Carlylean workaholism.  Neither is self-aware or honest, neither integrates our intellectual and theoretical beliefs with our practices in any defensible way; nether is communally responsive and responsible; and neither leads to anything like equanimity in our professional, or indeed personal, lives.  In sum, both are avoidance strategies and make for both miserable and–in the communities of our departments, classrooms, and larger profession–misery-making existences.  (The Academic Self, 8-9)

Although Bauerlein’s style is more caustic, I think it’s a pretty similar point.

“How can someone get ready to use the Internet for the first time?”

“Go to a middle-school chess club, hand out crystal meth & guns.”

A handy primer. (Via cassiopeia11)

The blog Journal to Perplexity has a terrific post up about the movie, WR: Mysteries of the Organism, a Yugoslavian movie from 1971 that takes up the–largely deranged–Freudo-Marxist theorist, Wilhelm Reich.  The post, complete with stills, does a great job capturing the weirdness that Reich seemed to attract, and rounds up a couple of additional links that are interesting.

I have actually seen WR, because my first interesting publication is an essay on Reich called “Loving Civilization’s Discontents,” in Tim Dean & Christopher Lane’s collection, Homosexuality & Psychoanalysis.  (Thanks to the magic of Google Books, you can see a bit of it online here.)  That article features my favorite epigraph, from one of Reich’s journal entries, as he dimly perceives that, you know, maybe he was wrong to break with Freud:

Somewhere my political-psychological theory has an enormous loophole where all the facts I try to gather slip through my fingers.   The more I attempt to cling to the idea of human decency, the more man behaves in an indecent, unintelligent, stupid fashion.

Or, as Freud put it more accurately, Homo homini lupus.

–

Also, Brian Doherty has a mini-review up at Reason’s Hit & Run blog of Dennis Cass’s Head Case, which I point to only as an excuse to remind people of this interview I did with Cass at PopMatters.com.

Since we were traveling on Valentine’s Day, we observed it on this past Friday. Our gift this year: We went in together on a coffee pot, which is easily the most important item in our house. Like everyone else, we went to Target, where we saw this hilarious product description (for a model we didn’t buy):

I think $59.99 is an excellent price for a “Permanent God Filter,” which I think you’d pretty much need after using anything with “complete frontal access.” In general it would be nice to have after teaching Darwin, or any of the Victorian faith-and-doubt literature, or Freud, or anything else provocative. And I have relatives who would be warded off by such a filter, too.

Having said that, reading about this “pantented feature” doesn’t exactly inspire me with confidence; plus, I really think the Target Team Member who made tag must’ve been drunk: “Easy add water and coffee without moving around counter” doesn’t even parse.

While the coffee maker we bought won’t filter out God, it does make a serviceable pot of coffee without leaking all over the kitchen, which is really all we wanted.

–

In other news, the answer to this question is: Because the busybody technician who installed the heater turned it way down–under 110 degrees–”because you have a child.” Which is true, but we also live in Connecticut, where it’s been known to get cold. A few turns of a phillips-head screwdriver later, the heater’s reset to ~125, and there’s hot water a-plenty.

Over President’s Day weekend, my parents took the three of us to Walt Disney World for some quality vacationing with the grandson.  I’m not going to bore anyone with a blow-by-blow account of the trip, but will just offer a few Random Bullets of Disney Reflection:

• We stayed at the Polynesian Resort, which was both lovely and convenient (right on the monorail).  On two mornings, we went to a character breakfast (with Pluto, Mickey, Lilo, and Stitch), which E. liked more than I would’ve thought.  The only drawback was that the internet router was broken in our room, so we had no internet access, which was unexpected.
• We also had one of the Disney Dining plans.  This was a mixed blessing.  On the one hand, it was super-convenient.  On the other hand, to get full value, you have to eat a spectacularly unreasonable amount of food.  (3 courses each at lunch *and* dinner, for instance.)  For a new perspective on gluttony, I heartily recommend spending 15 minutes people-watching at a funnel-cake snack cart, or watching a mom bribe her 15-month-old with Chicken McNuggets.  Finally, my mother had made arrangements for reservations at various locations around the park.  You could cancel them without repercussions–except, if you canceled, it was almost impossible to get in anywhere else.
• The one thing that I would warn any parents about is that the Stitch’s Great Escape ride is both dumb and a little scary for small kids–ours is 4.  You’re “trapped” in the dark, with “laser” cannons blasting you, you get urinated on by Stitch (just water, obviously), and he farts on you as well.  It was our second ride of the day, and put E. off a remarkable number of rides after that.
• We also got the PhotoPass package, wherein Disney photographers take your picture, and you can order various things afterwards.  This turned out pretty well, and would’ve been better if not for the complication below.  Here’s a set of the pictures, and here’s the picture that’s E’s and his Grammy’s favorite.
• Here’s the set of our own snapshots.  (See E peeking out of a race car, or riding in the tea cups with his Grammy.
• We’d not been to the Wild Animal Kingdom before.  On the one hand, there were some cool parts–half the snapshots are of E playing in a giant dino-playscape, and the safari wasn’t bad.  On the other hand, the relentless eco-preaching (poaching is the cause of all Africa’s woes!  don’t litter!) was so over-the-top that even A was ready to pick up a gun and start hunting for endangered species.
• Favorites: E: Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin, Indycar Racing, Mad Tea Party, Safari.  A: Mad Tea Party, Carousel, Test Track, Mission: SPACE.  Me: Test Track, Mission: SPACE, Pirates of the Caribbean–really, though,  just watching E.  Unanimous least-favorite: Stitch’s Great Escape.
• E. got sick for the last 2 days–an absolutely inevitable consequence for a kid who touches everything and then touches his face.  On Monday, after throwing up, he said, “the good news about being sick is that I got to spend some quiet time with Grammy and Granddaddy.”  I passed the news along to Grammy, who said, “Yeah, that’s because after y’all slipped away to Epcot, we let him watch the Daytona 500, some hockey, a Simpsons episode, and half of American Gladiator.”  So he’s all caught up on his Fox viewing for the next several years, which is good.

After E got sick, I did, too, and then Grammy and Granddaddy.  A did not, which largely confirms her in her health fascism (”sickness is the fault of the sick themselves!”).  And, of course, without Internet access, we came back from the holiday weekend pretty far behind.  All in all, though, a fun trip!

Bonus trip fact: If you see a middle-aged man with a dirty t-shirt that fails to cover his stomach, and the t-shirt says, “I came here to see tits and drink beer . . . and I’m out of beer,” then you are probably at the Orlando airport the day after the Daytona 500, and NOT at the Bradley airport at Hartford.

Bonus trip-related grammar snark: Are these seats wheelchair-reserved, or not?